Jesus, The Man
Take a few minutes and go on YouTube and listen to the song “Mary Did You know”. The second verse ends with the last two lines,
Did you know
that your Baby Boy has walked where angels trod?
When you kiss your little Baby you kissed the face of God?
The song and the scriptures teach us that Jesus was God being a man. God! Can you imagine that? God chose to be a man. What a wild concept. God, the creator of all that we see, the sun, moon, stars, grass, trees, oceans, fish, flowers, and mountains, He became a man.
Mary, a very young Israelite woman, a virgin, gave birth to a baby. That baby was God being a baby. Yet God needed help. Mary nursed Him, washed Him, burped Him, changed His diapers. That God baby needed help because everyone born of woman needs help. She took care of Him and Joseph taught Him carpentry. We are told “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.” Luke 2:52 We also read this about Jesus, “Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.” Jesus grew and learned. He was just like all of us.
Once Jesus was ready to begin His ministry, Jesus went to John to be baptized. After His baptism, Mark tells us, “The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.” 1:12-13.
Notice, after being tempted by Satan, angels went to Him and ministered to Him. Why?
Jesus, being one of us, surely felt the strength of His body ebbing as He fought Satan and his temptations. Think about it when something comes your way, and you are being tempted in many ways at the same time. It takes so much out of you. You may break down, sweat might pour from your body, you may shake, tears may flow, anger may well up in you. Your head pounds and your stomach hurts. Huh? Hasn’t this happened to you?
David, Psalm 32 tells us, was struggling with the temptation of NOT confessing his sins to his Father. He was alone in his throne room, and we are told his palms were dry, his stomach ached, his bones were wasting away, his strength was dried up like it happens in the heat of summer. Why? Because Satan and his temptations are powerful. This is what happens to any who are serious about serving the Lord and even those who are not yet are troubled by things. The one who was just fired, and bills are piling up. The alcoholic. The couple who can’t seem to get along and divorce seems inevitable. This is temptation. Satan is telling us God won’t understand. Even worse, he’s telling us there is no God or that God doesn’t even care. He often tells us we are not good enough to stand before the Father with our troubles. He tries to crush us, and too often he does.
Well, Jesus was one of us. He felt the same things that we feel. Not that He was guilty of sin, but He was standing for all the hurting, soul broken people that needed so desperately to understand that Satan wasn’t the most powerful, and he wasn’t telling us the truth. So, Jesus was taken before Satan by the Spirit of God in order that He might be tempted by Satan and feel the struggle of that temptation.
This is, can I say, good news? He feels what we feel, and He wants us to know just how much we mean to Him. “I’m going to join with you in your sufferings.” He tells us. Remember, He was baptized by John because that’s what the Father was calling the nation to, and He was/is the King of the nation. So of course, He would do what the Father was calling the broken nation to do. And what He had to do included being tempted of Satan. Face to face with Satan. He needed to overcome temptation. We get frightened by things that go bump in the night. What kind of terror would it bring if we were forced to stand face to face with the very personification of evil? Jesus did it for us, and He did it as one of us!
Josiah Tilton